Protocol
Definitions A protocol (also called communications protocol) is A protocol is * "a set of rules for assembling and transmitting data over a network."Department of the Army, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Systems for Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Facilities, at B-4 (Jan. 21, 2006) (full-text). * "the rules of syntax that enable computers to communicate on a network.US-CERT,"Security of the Internet" (full-text). Overview "Protocols allow data to be taken apart for faster transmission, transmitted, and then reassembled at the destination in the correct order. The protocol used determines the way errors are checked, the type of compression, the way the sender indicates the end of the transmission, and the way the receiver indicates that the message has been received. Protocols can describe low-level details of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which bits and bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges between allocation programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file across the Internet)."Privacy Impact Assessment EINSTEIN Program: Collecting, Analyzing, and Sharing Computer Security Information Across the Federal Civilian Government, at 7. The Internet largely uses formats built upon the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Other protocols include the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) set. The protocol of one system does not necessarily work with another system, and there is an effort to standardize or translate the various protocols so that computers can all talk easily with one another. To make this possible, some protocols may have to be abandoned, while others may be modified or translated when necessary. Two sets of protocols — the Domain Name System (DNS) and the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) — are essential for ensuring the uniqueness of each e-mail and website address and for facilitating the routing of data packets between autonomous systems, respectively. References See also * Address resolution protocol * Anonymous file transfer protocol * Authentication protocol * BitTorrent protocol * Border Gateway Protocol * Challenge-response protocol * Communications protocol * Cryptographic protocol * Data communications protocol * Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol * E-mail protocol * Extensible Authentication Protocol * Exterior Gateway Protocol * FastTrack protocol * File Transfer Protocol * Handshake protocol * Host Identity Protocol * HyperText Transfer Protocol * Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure * Interconnected Voice Over Internet Protocol * Interior Gateway Protocol * Internet Control Message Protocol * Internet Group Management Protocol * Internet protocol * Internet Protocol Version 4 * Internet Protocol version 6 * Internet Protocol cloud * Internet protocol suite * Network Control Protocol * Network News Transfer Protocol * Network protocol * Online Certificate Status Protocol * Open protocol * Point to Point Protocol * Post Office Protocol * Proprietary protocol * Protocol suite * Real-time streaming protocol * Remote Desktop Protocol * Routing protocol * Security Content Automation Protocol * Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol * Simple mail transfer protocol * Simple Network Management Protocol * SNI protocols * Synchronization protocol * Transmission Control Protocol * Transport protocol * Trivial File Transfer Protocol * Tunneled password protocol * User Datagram Protocol * Wireless Application Protocol Category:Technology Category:Definition